I have been a mac user for quite a while now (about 5-6 years) and I would consider myself rather tech-savvy. That being said I have very little insight to the automation capabilities that have been introduced to OSX a couple of years ago. There are smart folders, folder actions, and other applescripts, as far as I know.

As I haven't come across a good tutorial, or some other resource for these new capabilities within OSX, I was wondering if people could give a couple real-life examples of how they are using these.

5 Answers
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For example, I have a Smart Folder called 'Wallpapers'. I've made the criteria for entrance to this Smart Folder:

.png filetype

2560x1600 pixels

As such files appear (or are removed) anywhere on my system, so they'll be added to or removed from the Smart Folder.

When I'm done I can just delete the Smart Folder without deleting the files that reside inside it.

NB: The default behaviour is to add Smart Folders to the Sidebar. You can uncheck that option when you create the Smart Folder or you can simply drag the Smart Folder out of the sidebar to anywhere you wish. I've chosen the Desktop.

@Nathan: No, but I took the broader reading of the question "There are smart folders, folder actions, and other applescripts, as far as I know. As I haven't come across a good tutorial, or some other resource for these new capabilities within OSX, I was wondering if people could give a couple real-life examples of how they are using these." Feel free to flag my post for deletion if you want though. I wasn't sure myself.
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boehjMay 25 '11 at 0:52

A valid point. As Smart Folders aren't AppleScript, I assume the autor is interested in general automation. I've edited the title to reflect that.
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Nathan GreensteinMay 25 '11 at 1:50

AppleScript is cool, you can use it and Automater to some really cool stuff from simple batch file renaming to extremely complicated things, like manipulating Illustrator, Photoshop or other files. Very generally speaking, you use AppleScript to drive the applications that you use daily to do the repetitive tasks that can be automated. I've done things like create a script to process emails as they come in. I've written scripts that plat graphs all kinds of stuff.